Portland jury clears pilots in 2008 firefighting crash that killed 9, awards more than $70 million

View full sizeDon Ryan/The Associated PressWilliam Coultas (center), who was badly injured in the crash of a firefighting helicopter four years ago, holds hands with his wife, Chris (left) as a jury announces its verdict Tuesday in a Multnomah County courtroom. The jury found that Coultas and the late Roark Schwanenberg, were not at fault in the crash and awarded them more than $70 million. Nine people died in the incident in August 2008.

After seven weeks of trial into the cause of a Northern California helicopter crash that killed nine of 13 people on board, a Portland jury cleared the names of the pilots by awarding more than $70 million Tuesday.

The jury said a documented flaw in the helicopter's engines, not human error, was at fault for the 2008 crash, the deadliest air tragedy of working firefighters in U.S. history.

The verdict served as vindication for surviving pilot William Coultas and, at least posthumously, for the late Roark Schwanenberg. Lawyers for General Electric, the maker of the helicopter's engines, argued that the helicopter was overloaded.

The jury awarded Schwanenberg's family more than $28 million, which includes money for his "pre-death" suffering and the loss to his widow and children. Jurors awarded Coultas and his wife $42 million for their losses.

The verdict is the largest in Multnomah County Circuit Court in years, and one of the biggest in the court's history. After jurors were dismissed, several met Coultas, his wife, his daughter and Schwanenberg's widow in the courthouse hallway to share handshakes, hugs and tears.

"It's a relief. ... We kind of feel that we can move on a bit," said Coultas' daughter, Ricci Coultas. "This was never about money. To say it was would trivialize the situation. We really just wanted our voices to be heard, for the truth to be told."

Jurors said that although they based their verdict on the facts before them, they were deeply shaken by testimony from three of four survivors of the craft. They spoke of the Sikorsky S-61N helicopter tumbling down the forested mountainside and bursting into flames, of the screams of agony from those on board and of the devastation that followed. The trial took its toll on the first day, with three jurors dropping out after looking at photos of at least one burned dead body. Seven firefighters -- all from Oregon -- Schwanenberg and James N. Ramage, a Forest Service inspector pilot from California, died.

Coultas, now 48, suffered third-degree burns on his hands, arms, legs and head. He appeared in court day after day, the scars still visible above his collar and on his face. Jurors said Tuesday that they hoped to drill home to the helicopter's makers that problems with the craft must be addressed.

"I hope this message gets out there," said juror John Sturgill. "... Everything about this case smelled of death."

Six years before the 2008 crash in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, an identical helicopter crashed in Canada, breaking the pilot's back. The Canadian Transportation Board identified the same engine flaw, a design problem with the fuel filtration system, said plaintiffs' attorney Gregory A. Anderson.

Juror Chris Holznagel said GE was clearly the most to blame. "The fact of the matter is it was GE's engine and they didn't notify the FAA" about the defect, he said. "Had they done that, none of us would be here."

Firefighter Jonathan Frohreich, who was 18 at the time, told jurors that he and others had been battling the fire for days and sleeping in tents along a ridge on the 5,945-foot-tall mountain. On Aug. 5, the forecast was for lightning, and so a decision was made to evacuate the firefighters by helicopterfrom a helipad on the mountain.

Twice, the helicopter landed and took off – ferrying firefighters with no problem. Frohreich boarded the helicopter on its third trip. Because he was one of the last to get on, he sat in the back in what would turn out to be one of the safest seats because it was the last part of the cabin to catch fire.

Frohreich felt the helicopter dip once, then take a second, hard dip. He remembers seeing trees out the window, and everyone ducking their heads between their legs as the helicopter tumbled down the mountainside.

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Smith said investigators found that the helicopter was at full power when it first hit the first a tree and remained at full power when it hit a second tree based on sound spectrum analysis from cockpit recorders.

"It was overweight and it clipped a tree and lost a blade tip" from the main rotor, Smith said. "This crash had nothing to do with the engines."

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded that the engines were "operating normally" and that the craft was loaded up with more weight that it could carry. Federal law, however, prohibited jurors from hearing of the NTSB's findings, but not the evidence that led to those findings.

Anderson, the plaintiffs' attorney, called a string of witnesses and experts to prove that the problem was with the engines. Witnesses said that the helicopter lifted 100 to 120 feet off the ground before crashing, and that an overloaded helicopter wouldn't have been able to rise more than 50 feet.Anderson described the NTSB investigation as one-sided and terribly flawed. Anderson said the NTSB gave GE and Sikorsky access to engine parts that were critical to the investigation, and those parts turned up missing.

"GE and Sikorsky ran that investigation," Anderson said. "They provided all the data, all the theories."

The plaintiffs had sought as much as $177 million.

In the next 10 days, Judge Kelly Skye will hear arguments on whether General Electric, the maker of the helicopter's engine, will have to pay all or part of the $70,455,000 verdict. Jurors found GE 57 percent at fault for the crash, and at the very least the company will have to pay about $40 million.

The jury found Carson Helicopters, which owned and operated the craft, 23 percent at fault. Jurors said Sikorsky, the company that manufactured the helicopter, was 20 percent to blame. But neither will be liable for paying any of the verdict. A judge dismissed Carson from the case. Sikorsky reached an undisclosed settlement just after the trial began.